Cholla Bay Baby octopus

 

Cholla Bay was our last area that we studied it is an intertidal estuary. The sea was incredibly far out during low tide it would take like 5-10 minute to walk from the sea at low tide to the area that the sea will be at high tide. It was a very muddy kind of texture walking. At first all I saw was just millions upon millions of snails they were literally everywhere. We could not find anything for a good while that was until we found an octopus that sealed itself in a clam shell. When we opened the clam shell the octopus was guarding its eggs. They immediately started hatching though which we assume is due to a stress response due to the fact that they should have hatched at high tide instead. As seen in the picture you can see the baby octopuses which are honestly very adorable, you can even see their little tentacles. Afterwards we were able to find another octopus in another clam shell, we did have to pry it open because the octopus was holding it shut. As we were planning on making our way back to the vans we even found a stingray, which was honestly cool because I never expected to find one in the Gulf of California. This trip I have learned a lot about the intertidal areas along the coast of the Sea of Cortez, and I cannot wait to eventually come back to the area and do my own searching for organisms. I will want to even go into more detail about marine biology so I will definitely look forward to learning more about the ocean and the organisms that live in it.

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